From climate change to military aggression, many challenges do not respect sovereign borders and require global, coordinated responses. The system of international law was set up precisely to address such challenges, finding its present configuration largely in the aftermath of World War II. But with the current, interconnected rise of nationalist regimes all around the world, this legal system is under threat. In addition to law, architecture and planning expertise informs these shifts. Aspects of this interplay between the built environment and international law include the willful destruction of civilian infrastructure, assaults on cultural heritage, territorial disputes, flows of labor and materials, and the causes and effects of climate change, to name just a few. As an institution dedicated to the support of transformational work in architecture and the allied fields, The Architectural League is committed to making space for education and action on these themes. How are architecture and planning both agents and effects in the machinations of international law; and where is this system, and the built environment’s place in it, headed?

Jacob R. Moore is executive director of The Architectural League, overseeing the programmatic, financial, and administrative life of the organization. Moore has particular interests in housing and climate change, for which he has led large teams and multiyear programming in his previous decade-plus of work at Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. He is an independent critic and curator, having been a founding editor of The Avery Review, and previously worked at Princeton Architectural Press. Moore has served as a selection panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and as a critic and juror for numerous universities and other nonprofit organizations. Moore succeeded former executive director Rosalie Genevro in September 2023.

Anne Rieselbach is the League’s program and membership d irector. Rieselbach directs annual public programs and competitions, including Current Work, Emerging Voices, the League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, and First Fridays, as well as the League’s student and mentorship programs. She also directs special projects, such as the multi-year Folly/Function collaboration with Socrates Sculpture Park and was a member of the organizing team for the Re-envisioning Branch Libraries design study, coorganized by the League and the Center for an Urban Future. Rieselbach has served as a juror for desigNYC, the Lyceum Fellowship, and the Marcus Prize, as well as for many universities, nonprofits, and professional organizations, and serves on the board of directors of Open House New York. In 2019 she received an Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was awarded an honorary membership in the New York Chapter of the AIA.

The Architectural League of New York supports critically transformative work in the allied fields that shape the built environment. As a vital, independent forum, the League stimulates thinking, debate, and action on today’s converging crises of racism, inequity, and climate change, in service of a more livable and just world. Founded in 1881 by a group of young architects, the League works to continuously rethink the allied fields of the built environment, to make them ever more inclusive, equitable, and responsible, meeting the spatial needs of society in meaningful, beautiful, and joyful ways.